


Visions of Bodie and Doyle: paying homage to a favourite film: Bogart's The Desperate Hours

by shooting2kill



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:20:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29721972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shooting2kill/pseuds/shooting2kill
Relationships: Bodie/Doyle
Comments: 22
Kudos: 19





	Visions of Bodie and Doyle: paying homage to a favourite film: Bogart's The Desperate Hours

| _The briefing room was fully at capacity, the crowd of agents hard pressed to make space for Cowley as he made his way to the front. Bodie and Murphy settled against the wall on one side, near the chalkboard which was, for once, ominously empty... “Ladies and gentlemen.” The Controller spoke into the silence. “The last few days have given us an aeroplane crash, a stock market collapse, and wind and rain some have called the storm of the century. Today has dealt us something worse… very much worse, I’m afraid.” Cowley pulled his spectacles off and set them on the podium in front of him, and looked around at his gathered agents. “Approximately twenty minutes ago, Lord Louis Mountbatten and several members of his family were killed in an explosion aboard his boat, off the coast of Ireland.”  
There were a few audible gasps...  
“... and great harm will befall the kingdom …” Murphy’s quiet comment broke the silence in the room.  
[Should Harm Befall Us:Ubicaritas(Janet)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27281110)_  
---|---  
| _There was only one building along the seafront street tall enough for the shooter to have shot down on the promenade. An old fashioned place, the Old Ship Hotel, all white washed Victorian splendour....  
Bodie stopped to orient himself. He caught a glimmer of sun on metal up on the roof of the hotel. *There* — gun still in place...  
Was the sniper up there, too? Or had he fled once he’d initiated the chaos? Bound to be other innocent bystanders shot besides Doyle... What if Doyle bled to death whilst Bodie was in pursuit of their suspect? Every fibre of his being yearned to turn around, abandon the chase, and carry Doyle to safety.  
Which Doyle would hate. Once patched up, he’d harangue Bodie up one side and down the other.  
How badly was he bleeding? Where had the bullet hit?  
[Just Another Day by the Sea:Dawnwind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24512848?view_adult=true)_  
| _"You expect to get the money, you’d better take proper care of me!"  
"Oh, you’re going to be taken’ care of right proper, you little bastard and it won’t be because of any money, either. You’ll be beggin’ for whatever I decide to give you after a couple of months."  
"Couple of months? What are you talkin’ about?" Doyle’s mouth went dry. What was going on?  
His captor laughed. "Thought you were worth all sorts of money, didn’t you? Rich bugger like you, be out of here in no time, right?"  
"You tellin’ me they’re refusing to pay?"  
"No, I’m telling you we’re not askin’. You think my boss needs money? You stupid git. It’s revenge he’s after... You think about that, bein’ down there in that hole, day after day, month after month, year after year..."  
"No, wait!" Doyle felt a surge of panic. "There’s been a mistake. I’m not who you think I am..."  
[ Only the Reflection:Elise_Madrid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/200916?view_adult=true)_  
| _“Where’d you go?” Bodie asked coldly.  
“What’s wrong?” Doyle asked.... “Something happen?”  
“Nothing.”  
Doyle stared, the look that could strip varnish at sixty paces. The look that Bodie always feared saw straight through him. Like he was the one with something to hide. He stared back — stared hard without love or affection and this time saw only the flaws: the dented cheekbone, the fine lines across Doyle’s forehead and around his shadowy eyes, the silver threaded hair grown long in hospital. But more than that. He saw a man who wasn’t getting any younger. A man with few illusions left.  
In that respect: a man like himself.  
“Yeh,” Doyle said. “Somethin’ has happened.”  
[Calibre:JGL (Wayback Machine) ](https://web.archive.org/web/2017*/https://www.hatstandfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=839&chapter=2)_  
| _For the first months Cowley, in a rare display of sympathy, let him work alone. When he finally assigned him partners Bodie ran through them like sand through an hourglass, requesting one after another. Most were unable to bear his moods, and they only succeeded in verbally tearing each other's throats out. And the others.... He couldn't look at the man with the curly hair, or the one whose eyes were almost the same color he remembered. He finally takes the bottom of the barrel, a young and inexperienced man who keeps quiet and looks nothing like his partner. He gets killed three months later and Bodie can't even feel grief at the loss. He wonders if he can feel anything anymore.  
After that Cowley gives him mostly deskwork. He accepts it without questioning, does his job with a quiet efficiency, arriving and leaving never too early or late, coming and going like a shadow...  
[Broken:D'Angelo's Song](https://teaandswissroll.livejournal.com/356754.html)_  
| _He turned his collar up against the growing cold and stuffed his hands in his pockets. It was then that the fingers of his left hand touched something hard and metallic. At first he thought it was an unspent bullet. He fished it out as he walked and turned it over in his hand. It was homing device. How the hell had it got there? No wonder they knew where he was. As he walked briskly – the back of his mind still focused on his friend back at the safehouse needing urgent attention – he quickly reviewed the day’s events. He thought back to their briefing at HQ that morning, then the meeting in the pub as they thrashed out their strategy... someone had been in the pub while they were chatting and had planted the bug then...  
[ Ambush:Sylvie Orp](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13020608/1/Ambush)_  
| _Bodie was aware of a cold sinking feeling deep in the pit of his stomach... He had seen police searching for bodies in the river before... "Where's Ray?" Bodie's voice sounded normal enough, but Cowley wasn't fooled. Bodie knew, but just couldn't believe it. It was a risk he knew they had talked about, the possibility of one of them being left behind -- a risk that might happen tomorrow. Not today - -- never today. Blindly, they had clung to the hope the childish belief that tomorrow never comes -- but like all childish illusions that belief had just been shattered. Without speaking, Cowley moved to stand closer, silently offering support...[ Not Even Goodbye:Rob](http://www.thecircuitarchive.com/tca/archive/7/noteven.html)_  
| _Waking up knowing he was bound again, gagged again. Not again. Testing his bonds he moved a little, then perforce held still. Raeburn's crazy; maybe he thought he'd already killed me. He did feel like he should be dead... Suffocation? What were the colours on his painter's palette at home? The new painting of Bodie was coming along well. Not anything anyone would want to put in their living room of course, but maybe a gay couple would buy it someday. Not if he died though, drowned in blood... Footsteps. Raeburn? "Scum? You awake; I know you're awake. Don't make me angry; I'd kill you right now sooner than look at you. Faggot curly head." Doyle looked up at him...[ Backlight:Jeroen Richards ](http://www.thecircuitarchive.com/tca/archive/13/backlight.html)_  
|  _Bodie stood between the pale grey-blue-green walls of Doyle's flat. The flat palm of Doyle's absence, Doyle's coma, pressed him into silence. The feeling was more like horror than grief. The world was wrong. It was not possible that Doyle ... that Ray would never hear ... that Bodie would have to ... He could not form the thought. Could not even think it. Couldn't just stand here. He had to find the shooter and take him apart. And then get back to Ray.[ Ray Knows:jat_sapphire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178700)_  
|  _...More hoofbeats, definitely from the front of the house - up and down that track, perhaps, or... the same horses over and over, or more than two? ...Bodie tried to listen, tried to make sense of the noises. The horses called out again, louder, panicked. Rustlers? It probably wasn't unheard of out here in the sticks, there was a thriving black market down south. Nothing. There was nothing to be seen from the front window of the cottage, though it overlooked the track... It was stupid, they needed torches and thicker clothes against the cutting wind, and Doyle needed his gun which was still upstairs in its holster, but there was something about the pitch of the animals' voices, something ... "I don't like this..." Doyle said, voice low."[ Mollycross:Slantedlight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025060)_  
| _... he glanced across at his former friend (and) instantly recognised Harris’ agitated state; hyped up, ready to do battle, exactly as he had always been prior to an op. Bodie suddenly had to dampen down his own wayward emotions before they tore him apart. A small part of him wanted to feel the same excitement, to return to the times when he and Pete had been close, when they worked together, smooth as clockwork. But things were so very different from how they used to be. He had the law on his side now, he had pride in his work, he was one of the good guys - and he had a different partner. No, he knew exactly what needed to be done – it was how it would be accomplished that worried him. And what would be the actual cost?[ Out of Reach:cornishcat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21149063)_  
| _The realisation that he would never see his Bodie again hit him so suddenly that his stomach lurched and he had to stumble over to the sink to throw up... then sank to the floor, shaking harder than before. Outside, cars zipped past, shops closed and pubs opened. The world carried on, but how could it? How could anything go on? The tears that Doyle had managed to hold back finally spilled out and he drew his knees up to his chest, hid his face in his arms and cried. Choked and sobbed and keened in a way he couldn't remember ever having done before. He cried until his head ached and his throat hurt and he didn't think he would be able to breathe. A part of him no longer wanted to. He wanted the world to go away, to be left in that moment forever...[ Together, Alone:scouringsandstone ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10374453?view_adult=true)_  
| _...he suddenly stopped, frozen by the familiar smell that assaulted him and threw him violently back into his past. Doyle turned round to take the photos from Bodie and was surprised to see him rooted to the spot, a faraway look on his face. ‘Oi, wake up’ said Doyle ‘what’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost mate. What is that awful smell?’ Bodie shook his head in an attempt to clear it and block out the memories that were threatening to overwhelm him, he knew exactly what the perfume was and who it belonged to...[ Echoes From The Past:Klara3745](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20987228)_  
| _"Sir, I haven’t found the boy and it’s way past three by now. Any news from the kidnappers or Doyle?* “Negative, 3.7. No answer from Doyle. You’re not too far from the house he wanted to check out, so go and find out what’s going on!” “I’m on my way, Sir. 3.7 out!”. The silver Capri leapt forward like a stallion trying to discard its mount when Bodie shifted up a gear. It wasn’t long before he was approaching the farmhouse. Even from a distance, he could see that a window on the first floor and the entrance door had been blown from their hinges. The next thing he saw was Doyle’s Capri. By this time the lump in his throat had grown so much he was was finding it hard to swallow...[ Pushed Beyond the Limit:Angelfish45 ](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7885314/1/Pushed-Beyond-The-Limit)_  
| _Someone, somewhere, has royally fucked up, and it’s all Doyle can do to sit still in the dark, hoping against hope that it isn’t him. The last hour or so -- although it could really be more, because it’s hard to keep track -- exists in his mind only as a blur of tacked-together memories, mistake after mistake after unforeseen circumstance... He remembers the way the light fell across her face before Hatchett pulled the trigger, that ripped-wide-open feeling of unadulterated failure, suffocating in it, then really suffocating with a bag over his head, and Drop your weapons, gentlemen, and darkness. And silence. He hopes that Bodie hasn’t annoyed them. When it was Doyle’s turn he stayed quiet, got slapped around a little for his insolence but at least he didn’t cheek them: Bodie, on the other hand, is well-known for his mouth... The sound of a gunshot from the next room rips into his consciousness...[ Breakdown:Lozalong ](http://www.thecircuitarchive.com/tca/archive/18/breakdown.html)_  
| _“Put your hands on your heads,” a huge, Nordic looking man said politely... They hadn’t walked into a plain, slightly shabby family sitting room; they’d walked into a trap. It had sprung with very sweet precision… and they were caught. Bodie put his hands very slowly on his head. Anything else would have been extremely stupid. Annoyed with himself for having been caught so unawares, he tried to assess where a tedious day had gone so disastrously wrong. “You’re making a big mistake, you know, Harworth,” he said. “I’m not Nick Harworth,” the man said calmly... The circle of guns was keeping a reasonable level of alertness.[ Stockhomn Syndrome:Gil Hale](http://www.gilhalefic.com/stockholmsyndrome/)_


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